[Lingo] いつからか

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

s smith writes:
 > Hi all.
 > 
 > I'm trying to understand the lyrics _Far_Away_ sung by Ayumi Hamazaki.  

Now, that's wasted effort!  Try Imawano's adaptations of Dylan songs. ;-)

 > My problem is around the 「か」 following いつから.  I think I 
 > understand いつから.  I've seen this before and a search on the web 
 > shows　「いつからか」 to be fairly common on the web.  What is か doing 
 > here?

「いすから」is a question marker.  A literal translation might be
"from when did [Windows stop crashing]?"  For some reason, か makes
that question rhetorical, so「いつからか」 means something like "From
some unspecified time in the past".  Typically it's unspecified
because it's long ago and the speaker has forgotten, but it could also
be something like 「CDの音が出ない…ああ、いつからかワイヤが外されたな。」
"There's no sound from the CD ... aha, the wire seems to have been
disconnected some time ago."[1]


Footnotes: 
[1]  A real example from my recent life.  Sometimes you just need to
play Rush in the office, doncha know. :-)